Our team at AETC came up with a solar panel defrosting system using the solar cell itself as a heating element. After further research we found out that similar approaches were already patented in 2015. We then further simplified our system to aim for a reduced cost due to distributed converter system. Our experiments showed that we can heat up solar panels from -15°C to 5°C in 10-15 minutes. We devised a clever approach for solar defrosting which focuses on rapid liquidation of the bottom snow or icing layers of a tilted solar panel. All the snow mass on top that glides down from the panel surface due to a liquid interface between the panel and the snow mass.
The project was initiated by Prof. S. Mil’shtein. Main contributors: D. Asthana, M. Ushakov, and myself. J. P. Amazan, a senior undergrad at UML, helped us during several experiments.
